Nurse faces jail after death of child from force-feeding

A nurse is facing jail after being convicted of force-feeding her baby daughter until she died.

Gloria Dwomoh, 31, was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of 10-month-old Diamond.

She was said to be obsessed with the child’s weight and poured liquidised food into the child’s mouth.

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The baby died in March last year, after being taken to a hospital near her home in Waltham Forest, east London. A post-mortem examination found she died from pneumonia caused by food in her lungs.

The prosecution at the Old Bailey said the baby had been forced to take her feed from a jug after the spout was placed in the baby’s mouth.

The mother and her 37-year-old husband denied the charge. The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found not guilty.

Dwomoh showed no emotion as she was remanded in custody to be sentenced on November 9.

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Dwomoh, who worked at St Thomas’ hospital, south London, had wept in court as she denied doing anything to harm her baby.

She said she and her siblings had been fed the same way by her mother in Ghana when she was weaning them onto solid food.

On the night Diamond died, she had fed the child, bathed her and put her to bed before going to work. “I didn’t do anything to her. I didn’t do anything at all to hurt her,” she said as she broke down in the witness box.

Dwomoh showed the jury two small china jugs, the size of cups, which she used for feeding.

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She said she made up feeds, including liquidised chicken soup, in one jug and transferred small amounts to feed the girl into the other.

Diamond did not take to the bottle well and she was trying “to give her nutrients rather than milk”.

However Andrew Edis, QC, prosecuting, said the food had “gone down the wrong way” over months.

Mr Edis told the jury: “This is a very sad case. She died because of the method by which her parents chose to feed her at the time she was being introduced to solid food.

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“The allegation is one of force- feeding. If you have a child who is distressed and choking, you do not carry on.”

A serious case review took place into the baby’s death which followed social services and health care concerns about the feeding method being used by the mother in the past.

A detective in the case said: “She appeared to be obsessed with Diamond’s weight and ignored advice she had been given.”

Laura Eades, chair of Waltham Forest Safeguarding Children’s Board, said: “The death of a child by force-feeding is extremely rare. To our knowledge this case is the first of its kind in this country and we are determined to learn from the issues that were central to this tragic loss of life.

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She added: “The serious case review has found that there were weaknesses and shortcomings in the practice of some of the agencies involved with the family, but the panel and the independent authors of the report have concluded that the death of Diamond was not predictable.”